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Chinese New Year 2022

Filed in No Category by on 1st February 2022 0 Comments • views: 546

Chinese New Year, also known as Lunar New Year, is a festival that celebrates the start of a new year according to the traditional lunisolar and solar Chinese calendars.

It is a festival of prosperity, and typically welcomes in the beginning of the spring season. The festival is one of the most important celebrations in China and has strongly influenced the Lunar New Year celebrated in many other countries. Despite how cheerful this celebration is now though; the whole festival is thought to be based on a myth of fear.

According to the myth, the beast known as The Nian (A beast who lives under the sea or in mountains) would come from its home into neighbouring villages during the annual spring festival and ate the townsfolk during the middle of the night, mainly children as they were the ones asleep at home while the adults continued their festivities. One year, the villagers had had enough and decided to hide from the beast but before they went into hiding, an old man named Yanhuang appeared in the town promising he would get revenge on The Nian for them. When night fell, Yanhuang placed red papers and firecrackers all around town, successfully scaring away the beast and saving the town from its annual destruction. The villagers, returning to their unscathed village, assumed that the old man must be a deity sent to protect them. Yanhuang assured them that this was not the case and that his own village had been through the terror of The Nian and had learnt that the beast feared loud noises and the colour red, and that when he had heard that their town was the beast’s new victim, he simply wished to share his knowledge. The townsfolk thanked him for the help and set up a new type of festivity for the spring festival, each year they would wear red clothes, hang red scrolls and red lanterns from their houses and they would light firecrackers and bang their drums as loud as they could to celebrate their new found safety and fend away The Nian for another year.

Throughout the years these traditions have widely stayed the same, traditional dress in red and gold colours to show luck and happiness and to ward off evil. The red lanterns and scrolls are still used to decorate the streets and the red envelopes, also known as Hong Bao, are given to children as they were the main targets of The Nian to wish them luck and offer them prosperity.

This year, 2022, is a year of the water tiger which occurs every 60 years the last of which was 1962. Other recent years include 1950 and 2010’s Metal Tiger, 1974 and 2034’s Wood Tiger, 1926 and 1986’s Fire Tiger, and 1938 and 1998’s Earth Tiger. Tiger years are seen as good years for bringing about new changes and encourages people to overcome all difficulties and challenges in their lives with the strength and bravery of the tiger, a symbol of strength. People believe that a year of the tiger is the best time to renew everything, especially your strength and your energy. Years of the water tiger are especially good for letting go of the old and welcoming in the new. So, if you are facing a challenge this year or just want to sit back and let go of the last few years now is the time to reflect on those times and get your energy back. Take some time for you and welcome in new challenges.

 

 

 

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Reviews mean so much to a small business…

Filed in Blog, Hello by on 24th May 2020 0 Comments • views: 1755

Reviews make a huge difference to all small businesses.

We are always so grateful when anyone takes time to find us and write a review.

It’s like having an appraisal from your boss 🤣🤣… we’ve had some really lovely comments this week so thought we’d share them with you.

Thank you all who took time to feedback to us. I always like to do a little review of the past week every sunday morning and it has been a lovely and busy week.

We are trialling free postage for any orders over £20 now so feel free to test it out!

We are also going to be doing another live with #stayhome with chocolate in a couple of weeks. Watch this space!

Finally, it was absolutely lovely to hear a podcast which included Janey and Katie from Chilli Gourmets and Squidges and ourselves so please do listen to it …. it’s a lovely happy chat and left me with such a warm feeling. If you head to wherever you listen to podcasts and search for Food Stories from She Eats, the fourth episode is the one to listen to (they’re actually all fab).

Hope you’re having a delightful weekend!

World Chocolate Day?!

Filed in Blog by on 8th July 2019 0 Comments • views: 1396

We can’t quite believe that World Chocolate Day passed us by.

We had a rather hectic weekend with corporate orders, a hen party and a stall at the Mowgli Trust Dog Show!

We were over the moon to see so many of our regular followers at the Dog Show. Thank you for being such loyal supporters. We truly appreciate it.

We hope you did get to enjoy some delightful chocolate on World Chocolate day. I believe it was also world vegan day so we were really pleased that just by coincidence we had approved our vegan truffle… raspberry and coconut … very very scrumptious!

We’ll have it in our shop on Saturday 13th July of you fancy some!

 

Hope to see you soon – Bala

Children’s Parties

Filed in No Category by on 15th June 2019 0 Comments • views: 1308

We had our first children’s birthday party at the new unit today.

Frantic preparations took place as we waited the arrival of the birthday girl and 11 of her young friends and their parents.

We were delighted to work with the fabulous deli across the road from us, Boysenberry.  They put together a  fabulous children’s box for the party food and a platter of sandwiches for the parents.

The workshop went well and lots of questions were asked about the making of chocolate.

The children made a delightful selection of chocolate treats to wrap up and take away with them.

The birthday girl was very happy! 

Back to work!

Filed in No Category by on 11th June 2019 0 Comments • views: 1210

Truffles

So those of you who follow us on facebook and instagram will have seen that we’ve been off on our holidays and spent time with family as well as seeing delightful patisseries and chocolateries in sunny Paris as well as having a lovely afternoon at the House of Lords with fellow Small Biz heroes and the small business charter.

Back to work now and we have workshops scheduled on 30th June for adults and children’s workshops for the summer holidays will be sorted this week.

Hope you have a fabulous week and rain doesn’t dampen your spirits too much!!

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Earth Day 2022 views: 481

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